by Cameron Jace
With closed eyes, the Hatter gave in.
The pain had numbed him already and dying was only a matter of time. Ironically, losing his life was the least of his worries. It was the shame of having not stood up to the evil named Carter Pillar. Had he known that death isn’t that much of an issue, he would have been another man entirely.
Another teacup broke on his knee. The Pillar was taking his time. He enjoyed seeing the Hatter in pain.
The Hatter couldn’t wait for death soon enough. His heart was eating him out. With no help from above or below he would soon turn to stardust like everyone else. The pain intensified with the pillar’s pleasure.
“You know what annoys me. Hatter?” The Pillar said enjoying the burial of teacups. “That none of you ever stand up for yourselves.”
The words cut through the Hatter they made guy have as well cut his tongue off.
“I mean Lewis is a giddy old man who loves children and loves puzzles and fun. I get that,” said the Pillar. “Fabiola was under the influence of my Mushrooms. But look at you. You’re neither an addict or an icon. In fact you’re a threat to the children surrounding you in those tea parties.”
The Hatter closed his eyelids harder and tried not feed the Pillar’s ego by screaming.
“What kind of man gathers children around him and can’t protect them,” the Pillar said. “If you think that raising kids is all about fun and games then you missed the point. I was raised in the gutter. I was bullied and left behind and had no one to care for me as a child. But you know what it made me? Grow up into a man in real life. Why? Simple? I wasn’t alluded into thinking this world is a purple colored wonderland by every elder around me bringing me toys and singing me songs. I was given the real deal soon enough. That’s why I am winning now.”
If anything really killed the Hatter then it was those last words. He felt like he had betrayed everyone being who he was.
Even Fabiola.
His puppy live approach to live was a disguise to his cowardice, to his apathy. Not that he had ever understood that before today. The revelation came with a punch and came too late.
It pained him to know what will happen to the children of wonderland after he died. They will grow to be like the Pillar and Jabberwocky, spreading evil all over the world with the excuse of having grown up and become real adults.
There had to be a balance between goody good and slightly evil.
But it was too late anyways. He was being buried under the weight of his own teacups.
One teacup after another.
One.
And another.
Then another.
Then..
Something heavy landed beside him in the grave. Another corpse thudded against the mud. A lighting cracked in the sky. The Hatter could hardly move to check out on the Pillar’s other victim.
He hoped it wasn’t Fabiola.
Noticing that the Pillar had stopped dropping his teacups, the Hatter opened his eyes.
The Pillar’s silhouette stared down at him from above. He didn’t talk which scared the Hatter who waited for another lightning strike to see his face.
The lightning strike came and he saw it wasn’t the Pillar.
The Hatter was staring at Malice, Alice’s darker side.
He hardly recognized her, thinking she was some kind of demon looking like Alice.
“Give me your hand,” Malice said.
This was definitely Alice’s voice.
He hesitated.
“Give me your hand before he wakes up and we can’t kill him.”
The Hatter finally understood. It was the apillar’s corpse lying next to him. Who dared to push the Pillar into the grave? Not even Alice, but her darker side.
He stretched his hand out and she took it. Incredibly powerful, she pulled him up. He screamed from the pain in his body and his wounded skin.
“Toughen up,” she told him. “You can stand on your feet.”
The Hatter tried and was able to stand on his feet. Alice tucked the hose in his hand.
“All you have to do is choke him,” she instructed. “He had made this deal with Looking Glass that whoever killed him wore his face and body for life.”
“What?” the Hatter shrieked. “I don’t want that.”
“You will do that or I will bury you next to him:”
He had always adored Alice but this version of her scared him. Rumors had it that she had this darker side since she crossed over through the Looking Glass.
“You will live as if you were him,” she said. “You will live in his garden, study his books, and learn of his secrets. Then you will become him.”
“You mean pretend I am him.”
She shook her head and slapped the Hatter on the face,” You will become him. You will have his darkness and cunningness but still remember who you really are. You will do what I failed to do when I volunteered to become the Pillar’s apprentice”
The Hatter nodded, noticing that Malice herself was struggling.
“I’m not going to be able to do good for long in this form. You see we all have this other side, and somehow I found a way to sometimes control it and do good things using dark powers, but it doesn’t last. I’m hoping you can make it last with your Pillar face.”
“But why should I do this?”
Malice neared his face and looked into his eyes, “You come find me in the Real World, Pillar,” she was already calling him by his new name. “You come and find me and play the Pillar’s dirty games while deep inside helping me grow up strong enough to kill the jabberwocky. You come and raise me good, with pure heart but with sharp fangs. You come and confuse everyone, the Queen of Hearts and the rest. Let them think you’re the Pillar playing games, and use it against them.”
“I will cross over through the Looking Glass?”
She nodded. reaching for a smaller mushroom nearby. “I’m afraid the darkness in me will take over me. You coming to me as the Pillar will suppress it, make this Malice I’m controlling now think she is following the dark Pillar while you help me save the world. We will do good but always do little bad here and there to feed this Malice in me. This or I’ll turn all dark. Fabiola already knows about my darker side and wants to kill me.”
The Hatter barely understood but he liked the plan: Malice--or Alice--came to him in a time when he needed someone to offer the hard equation. Being good while being bad in the most nonsensical way.
He saw her eating the mushroom and escape. She ate so she--Malice--wouldn’t remember this conversation in the Real World. Now he understood the gravity of his mission. He will have to play devil and angel and guide Alice while she didn’t know the plan she ordered him in the first place. Let alone the fact that if he ever succeeded no one can ever know if he was really the Hatter.
She saved his life and gifted him with another chance.
He climbed down and killed the Pillar, wore his face and lived in depression for some time. Waking up every day with his most hated person on his own face was a struggle. But soon enough he felt comfortable in darkness’s skin, trying his best to remind himself everyday that he was doing it for the sake of the children.
Reminding him of the day Alice controlled the darkness of Malice for a few minutes and forged the greatest trick good had ever known against evil.
Epilogue Part One
Future: Bus Station, London
Never have I heard of a chapter in a book labeled: future. But this is my world, as insane as it gets—let alone that I’m talking to you, dear reader—or listener-right now.
It’s been a few years, and though I’m confused whether I’m a character in a book or not, I’ve come to accept the illogically absurd life we live in. Who knows, maybe you’re a character in someone else’s book? Watch out.
Right now, I am sitting iat the same bus station all over again. It looks newer. Touched by recent technologies of the new world, though I’m not sure what year it is yet.
I’ve just arrived, and I’m
not sure what will happen next. I have been looking for Jack for sometime. I thought I might find him on the bus, as usual. Maybe this part of the story never changes.
The air is crisp with the scent of early autumn, and the sun is struggling to stay alive. But I’m glad that I’m not in an asylum. I’m a regular girl waiting for a bus full of students.
An old lady greets me with a crumpled but genuine smile. A couple of student girls high-five me saying, “Yo Alice, what’s cooking?”
I don’t reply but they say, “You coming to the party tonight?”
“Sure,” I play along, not used to fitting in. “How would I miss it?”
“You’re so funny,” says the girl on my left.
When I turn, I suppress a great shriek and collect myself. Lorena and Edith, my sisters, quite uglier than I remember them are talking to me.
“You have to come to your party after all,” Lorena says.
I’m baffled. My party? I’m cool enough I host my own party now?
“I wanted to ask you if my sister, Edith, can join,”’ Lorena hisses, almost begging me.
I stare expressionlessly at Edith, remembering she and Lorena tried to kill me so many times. It occurs to me that maybe it’s one of their games again.
But when other students greet me and a hot guy winks at me and gestures for me to call him, I realize that this is happening.
I’m about to tell Edith, yes she can join me, but I’m interrupted with someone else’s voice.
“No,” the man says. “Lorena has to study.”
I don’t need to turn around to recognize the Pillar’s voice, though he sounds unusually sane and collected.
“Of course, professor Pillar.” Lorena says and pulls her sister away.
When I turn, the Pillar smiles at me. Handsome old man, I have to say. Still wearing a hat, a blazer, a black one this time with a vest and tie underneath. An expensive Rolex is wrapped around his hand that grips his cane.
No hookah?
No nerdy professor?
I see how the young girls are infatuated with him.
“Professor?” I play along, trying not to burst out laughing. Does he remember? Why have we even crossed back to this life? I remember Lewis suggested we all go back to Wonderland. Apparently, part of my memory isn’t helping again.
“Alice,” he nods seriously. “It’s an enchanting day.”
Did he say enchanting? I must be dreaming. I think I loved him more when we were insane.
My lips are sealed and my eyes are glued to his.
He says nothing, staring back. I can’t tell if he is puzzled. What if this is the kind of Pillar I will have to deal with in this life? Who is going to answer my questions? Who is going to drive me crazy and keep me on my toes?
But then I follow professor Pillar’s eyes, as he stares at his sleeve in wonder. My eyes don’t adjust easily, as I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I squint and near his arm as he discreetly indicates with blinking his eyes.
“Is that ketchup, professor Pillar?” I say with half a smirk.
“What else could it be? Blood?” he whimsically whispers in my ear. “Had to kill a three-legged monster, with two noses, and one eye in the back alley.”
“With a hookah, I suppose?” I whisper back, giggling.
“A chess piece,” he sighs. “I don’t smoke. Bad for you health.”
“A Black Chess piece, I assume.”
“You assume correct, Alice,” he says, sitting on the bench and leaning on his cane. He looks so elegant, I’m so pissed off. “That’s why you’re my best student, Alice. Come sit with me.”
I sit next to him, both of us staring at the street. I notice we are a few feet away from the Alice Shop in Oxford.
“So we’re professor and student in this version of the War?” I say as polite as possible, not looking at him.
“I like being a professor,” he still sounds posh and aristocratic as a respected professor would be. “It’s like being Indian Jones, except I’m cooler.”
“And you killed a Black Chess in the back alley?”
“Nah,” he leans back. “I ate pizza. It’s ketchup, only I don’t want to be seen gorging on pizza as I’m being called Sir at the moment.”
“Sir Carter Pillar,” I muse. “No more Pilla da Killa?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“No more Waltraud Wagner, the asylum warden?”
“She cleans toilets in the university,” he says. “Still fancies roller blades though.”
“Tom Truckle?”
“The dean.”
“That’s not good. No Mush Room?”
“It’s a toilet now,” he says. “where student secretly sniff ‘mush’, the newest version of drugs.”
“In Oxford University?”
“Sherlock did Cocaine, Lewis did pills. Things never change.”
“So why are we here again? Didn’t I do a good job the last time--of course you as well?”
“You did, dear Alice, but evil never dies.”
“Lame, don’t you think?”
“Lame is the name of the game. Always has been.”
“But how come I’m aware of what’s going this time?”
“You didn’t eat a mushroom to forget this time.”
“Fair enough. No Jabberwocky?”
“Not so far? Things seem pretty chill in this life. A Harry Potter reboot is in the making.”
“And the Queen of England?”
“Alive and kicking. Touch wood.”
“The Queen of Hearts?”
“Haven’t found her, neither did I find Margaret. They’ll show up.”
“The Cheshire?”
“Can be anyone walking around us.”
“You’re right about that,” I look around. It’s a scary thought that the Cheshire could be anyone. “Lewis?”
“Is pretty much dead in this version.”
“The March?”
“My assistant,” the Pillar smiles. “Works in the library now."
“Still paranoid?”
“If you mean the light bulb in his head, yeah, he still can’t sleep at night because he can’t turn off the lights, you know.”
“Fabiola?”
The Pillar doesn’t answer me.
I turn and look at him.
“Still looking for her.” he admits.
I nod. "And Jack?”
“On the bus, as usual.”
“I guessed so. Why doesn’t this part change?”
“I’m not God. I’m just a dude who likes tea.”
Funny how I’m never used to him actually being the Hatter. “So can I ask a question, professor?”
“The answer is no. I didn’t kill anyone yet.”
“That wasn’t it. I still wonder what this was all about?”
“Meaning?”
“I know I saved the world from the Jabberwocky last time. I know I had to go on a journey and grow into my adulthood and powers. But in the end, a lot of things still don’t makes sense.”
“Life isn’t supposed to make sense.”
“Really? That’s all you got for an answer?”
“Ask anyone if they know what this life is all about,” he slightly waves his cane at people as if they were lost sheep. “We just like to pretend that we do, though. That’s why our fiction has to make sense. You have to tell the reader why the hero was able to use this kind of magic at that certain point in time. You have to logically explain to them why the heroine fell in love with the hero while in real life it’s never so clear.”
“Again,” I remind myself. “Fiction is our way to save our souls from the fact. So no purpose, huh?”
“Even if there was a grand purpose to life, I’d say make your own box-sized purpose. One that fits and is achievable. Trust me, it’s called happiness.” he sighs and pulls out a cigar, tucks it in his mouth, but doesn’t smoke.
“You said you didn’t smoke.”
“But I started.” He winks.
&nbs
p; I shake my head and laugh.
“Do you know how many people wish to have lived that adventure of yours down the rabbit hole?” He says.
A wider smile lights up my face now. He is right. It’s been painful, mad, and bloody, but I’m grateful.
The Pillar puffs one last smoke and then winks at me and leaves.
But I stop him, “Should I call you Hatter this time?”
He doesn’t turn around and says, “You call me professor, kiddo,” he waves his cane in the air. In a larger than life attitude, he tips his hat at his students and tells me, “Wait for the bus, girl. Fall in love with that Jack boy. Don’t complicate it. You don’t need to have logical reasons to love him. Have kids and tell them about nonsense. They will love it.”
The yellow bus arrives. My eyes are still glued to the Pillar walking away. Part of me wants to run after him and thank him for all he has done. Father, friend, mentor and pain-in-the-ass. Part of me feels like Alice in the books when the journey end and she has to say goodbye to the great characters she met.
But I understand. I have to let him go. I understand I have to grow up. I understand that at some point I will have to complete the circle and mentor someone else — maybe I will meet Constance somewhere in this new life.
I blow him a silent kiss at the back and attempt to get on the bus.
“I felt that!” He says, still walking away. “Just don’t kill the boy in the bus.”
Then he walks away…
The bus arrives and I see Jack behind the window, standing all alone. As handsome as always, yet he looks more collected, and kinda shy.
I get on the bus snake my way to deliberately stand next to him. He shrugs when I look at him and looks away.
Oh, that’s not the Jack from before. He definitely doesn’t remember.
I find an empty seat, still staring at him. Sooner or later, I’ll have to leave this bus. I don’t feel comfortable here. The question is should I leave with or without Jack.
The student next to me get out on the first stop.
I rest my hand on the seat so everyone knows it’s reserved. Another sideway glance at Jack shows me that he was looking at me. Still, he shied away.
Calling him by his name would scare him. I clear my voice then say, “Hey,” I pat him on this back and he turns to look at me. “Do you want to sit?”
